Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  The consequence of all this was that the farm didn’t answer, and from a very clean well-conditioned one, which it was when they entered, it soon became a wild, foul, weed-run place. The fallows were as green as grass, the turnips were never half weeded, while, under the old plea of ploughing them out and laying them down better, one after another he got all the old pastures turned into tillage. Mr Easymind, the agent, found it was no use remonstrating, for if Hermitage couldn’t get what he wanted out of him, forthwith Mrs Hermitage ordered her fe-a-ton, and drove off to the dear duchess. Then in went the plough, and out went the grass; and if ever it was attempted to be laid down again, it was only with weeds. Letting farmers plough out old pastures, on the plea of laying them down better, is very much like persevering in the game of thimble-rig, each move making the field and the player worse.

  Although, of course, the major was not the greatest of the Hermitage acquaintance, still he was the greatest in the “reciprocity” line; for, though Pantile occasionally called at Hestercombe House — as much, perhaps, to say he had called as anything else — he never took any refreshment, and always gave the Hermitages to understand it was a mere duty visit, which they need not return. Guinea, therefore, was the greatest acquaintance; and very grateful they were for his condescension. They made as much fuss about Guinea as Guinea would make about the duke, if his grace had honoured him with a visit. Very pleasant it is, this sliding-scale of condescension, whereby we all, however humble, may hope to come in for some one’s admiration. Still the Hermitages were exclusive.

  Dicky Dyke, instigated by his “good lady,” no doubt, had made overtures for a visiting acquaintance, which they indignantly rejected, stating their surprise at a mere livery servant thinking of such a thing.

  “Things were come to a pretty pass,” Mrs Hermitage said. But to our breakfast.

  The cunning Guinea had made the meet at Hestercombe House for the purpose of letting Tom Hall see the estimation in which he was held; and one of the injunctions he laid on Billy Bidlington, as he saw him to his dog-cart after dinner, was to go Hestercombe House-wards home, and tell old Hermitage that young Mr Hall, the banker’s son, would be out. Now there wasn’t a name in the country so prized as that of “Hall”; for old “Sivin-and-four” issued his own notes; and Christmas, with its disagreeable concomitants then coming on, made people regard the greasy thumb-marked old things with additional affection. Indeed, the very name of Hall acted beneficially on Hermitage, for he had about got to the end of his tether, and couldn’t see his way to any more money. Rent, of course, he gave himself no uneasiness about; but he was behindhand with his labourers’ wages, and certain malcontents in the township had begun to be inquisitive about the application of the highway rates, just as if highway rates were not the special emolument of the party undertaking the collection of them, and seeing to the couping of the field-stones into the cart-ruts!

  Hermitage, therefore, rejoiced at the interruption that brought him from his nightcap of brandy-and-water to the door, at what, to a dun, he would have called an unseasonable hour of the night; and Billy, having delivered his message, and declined all further nourishment, Hermitage hurried back to tell his “missis” what awaited them. She had been getting things up on a medium scale of gentility, for she wasn’t sure that repetitions to the same audience — Bolus, the doctor; Waddleton, the retired flax-dresser; Bushel, the corn-factor; Ribs, the butcher; Felt, the hatter; Buckle, the saddler; and others of a like calibre — did them any good.

  Mr Hall coming made it quite a different case, and she was up betimes in the morning, looking out the best ducal “rag” of a tablecloth, with napkins, or rags of napkins, to match, and set Hermitage to polish up the richly-chased, Louis-Quatorze-T.-Cox-Savory-plated tea and coffee service that Mr Epergne, the silversmith, had presented them with on their marriage, over and above the 10 per cent Hermitage had on Epergne’s bill. Very busy and bustling Mr and Mrs Hermitage were, far busier than ever they were at the duke’s, where they used to command instead of work.

  And now, leaving them for a while toasting, and cake-making, and buttering, and bread-slicing, and ham-cutting, and egg-picking, and jelly-ejecting, and preserveopening, we will suppose our friend Tom and the major jogging along to the meet — the major with a horn at the saddle of his carriage-horse hunter, all spruce and cap-a-pie.

  “We must go in and see old Hermitage and his good lady,” observed the major, as if the idea had suddenly struck him. “Excellent man, the Hermit; wife seen a great deal of good society — quite tip-top, indeed — very intimate with the duchess,” the major sinking the how, and treating it as a question of equality, or, at all events, of visiting.

  “With all my heart,” replied Tom, who was glad of a reprieve, however short, from the hunt; not that his horse was troubling him much, for, independently of his naturally soft sluggish disposition, Tights had him put on a very reduced allowance of corn, having arranged with one of those pony-keeping, light-cart-owning scamps, with which most countries are infested, to take whatever Tights could spare, or rather “prig.” The horse was, therefore, far from fractious, quite a different animal to what he was on the Silverspring Firs day, and Tom and the major trotted along very pleasantly, admiring their breeches and taking care of their boots.

  “Ah, here we are,” at length exclaimed the major, as an old stone-roofed, mullion-windowed mansion, with massive chimneys, now peered above the trees, and Jonathan Falconer was seen with a slightly formed circle round his little hounds in the last remaining grass field before the house. It was a sad picture of desolation. The carriage ring had long been obliterated, and large docks, thistles, and coltsfoot grew up to the polished steps of the portico. The entertaining rooms in front had long been dismantled, but a peep through the partially hoarded window disclosed the marble chimney-pieces and crimson-and-gold paper of the dining-room, now bagging and mouldering about the damp walls. It had been a good and hospitable mansion once — too good and hospitable, perhaps — but the names of the feasters were almost forgotten.

  The Hermitages only occupied the kitchen and back part, Mrs Hermitage making what used to be the breakfast-room into a parlour. She was always “going” to furnish the once gold-papered drawing-room, but she never made any progress that way, having now no castle to draw upon for the needful. They attributed the deficiency to the repeal of the corn laws, though we question that an eighty-shilling fixed duty would have enabled our friend to furnish out of the profits of his farm. However, it served ELS an excuse, it never doing for a man to blame himself for his misfortunes.

  No one, to see Mrs Hermitage, would imagine for a moment that she had ever been anything but a would-be fine lady, so thoroughly unoccupied and disengaged was she. It was capital to see a woman who had been up before daybreak, putting out this, putting away that, opening out this, shutting up that, and who, at the last moment, was making bread and butter and scolding her solitary farm-servant, all at once whip off her apron and throw herself into a chaise longue (stuffed, we are sorry to say, with Gormanstone Castle hair), and subside, ‘Post’ in hand, into the elegant unconcerned lady of fashion. Indeed, she pretended to blink and be taken by surprise, as her white-breeched husband came ushering our great master of hounds, followed by his hoped-for son-in-law, into the little parlour, whose crackling wood-and-coal fire threw a cheerful radiance over the pictures, fans, and stolen finery around.

  “Oh, Major Guineafowle! is it you?” exclaimed she, recovering her vision, and tendering him a turpentiney gloved hand. “I declare I quite forgot it was a hunting morning, though,” simpered she, sighing, as she placed the ‘Post’ behind a china monster on the mantelpiece, “I’ve been so dreadfully shocked at this ‘orrid business of poor Lady Florence Mayfield’s that I haven’t been myself since I read it. Poor thing! to think of her making such a match; knew her so well — nice, mild, modest, unassuming thing. However, I ‘ope this will be a lesson to all mammas, how they let these nasty, intriguing, foreignering chaps com
e about their daughters — just as if there weren’t English music-masters, and plenty too, without them. But won’t you introduce me to your friend?” continued she, sighing heavily again as she looked at our Tom, who all this while had been standing, mouth open, lost in astonishment at the great society he was getting into.

  “I was going to do so,” bowed old Flexible Back, who had held Tom by the button for this purpose.

  “Any relation of Sir Binjimin ‘All’s?” asked she, half of Tom and half of the major.

  “No, I believe not,” replied the major; “Mr Hall, great banker at Fleecyborough,” the major in turn now making the best of our Tom.

  “Come, let’s have breakfast!” growled Hermitage, giving the little hand-bell a hearty flourish, as if to drown his wife’s loquacity, who, he feared, might mar a little project he had conceived for getting our Tom to assist a bit of his infirm paper through the bank. “Breakfast!” repeated he, as the perspiring damsel answered the summons; and Mrs Hermitage, motioning our friends to be seated, observed with a sigh, as she stroked down her dyed-green satin, that they would have had breakfast in the large room if she had known they’d been coming. But Hermitage, knowing it was no use trying the gammoning tack on before Guinea, who was in the same fine of business himself, handed a piece of biscuit out of his green coat-pocket to his wife, as a polite intimation to hold her tongue. Meanwhile, Tom, not feeling quite at home in such exalted society — a lady whose nerves were unstrung by the elopement of an earl’s daughter, — began to fidget about the room, pretending to stare at the knick-knacks, ornaments, and pictures, that were profusely scattered around, Mrs Hermitage being now under no fear of any of the castle people coming at this early hour and catching them.

  “Ah! that’s a portrait of dear Lady Gertrude,” observed she, as Tom halted before a coloured lithograph of a pretty girl feeding chickens out of a basket, with a lamb in a blue ribbon by her side. “That’s a portrait of dear Lady Gertrude,” repeated Mrs Hermitage with a sigh, for she was a great sigher. “Poor thing, I really think I must have it removed,” observed she to her husband, “for the sight of her recalls such painful recollections. Poor thing; did you know her, sir?” to our Tom, who was thinking she was not nearly so pretty as Laura.

  “No,” replied Tom, who did not aspire to such distinction.

  “Made an unhappy match, poor thing,” sighed Mrs Hermitage; “married Captain Rainbow, the great lady-killer — dessay you’ve ‘erd of him. I strongly advised her off, but girls will be girls, Mr’All,” sighed the lady, as she adjusted a profusion of mosaic manacles up her flyaway sleeves.

  “And how’s the duchess?” asked the major, as if they were all as thick as thieves.

  “The duchess is pretty well — at least, as well as ever she is at this time of year,” replied the lady; “subject to a little cold and irritation of the mucous membrane; and that reminds me, my dear,” added she, turning to her ponderous badly booted husband, “I shall want the fe-a-ton to-morrow or next day to drive over to the castle,” adding to the major, “she takes it unkind when one doesn’t go over, though the days are so short that it’s not very convenient, though I always say when one’s in one’s cage (carriage), it doesn’t make much matter whether one goes five miles or ten”; and as she was proceeding in this strain — rather raising than lowering the steam of her flash — our friend again dived into his pocket, and handed her a larger piece of biscuit than before. She took the hint this time, knowing she would “catch it” if she didn’t, and again addressed herself to our Tom, who had brought himself to bear upon the portrait of another young lady in crayons, with the name Matilda below.

  “That’s a sweet pretty face, Mr ‘All, isn’t it?” asked the lady, advancing towards it; “that’s a very charmin’ person — Lady Matilda Overton, wife of the sixth Lord Overton of Overton Castle — only a baron, but a very good sort of man — wish I could say as much for the ‘usband of this one” (pointing to a companion picture)—” this is Lady Overton’s sister — Lady Jane Baconface; married Sir John Baconface — never had a ‘appy day since; poor thing — uses her shamefully. I’m sure I often and often shed tears for her, poor thing,” said Mrs Hermitage, emitting a deep sigh as she spoke.

  The further discussion of the aristocracy was here interrupted by the bouncing in of a great buxom-looking dairymaid in a wide-sleeved silk gown (one of Mrs Hermitage’s cast-offs, given in part wages), with a trayful of the good things that Mrs Hermitage and she had been preparing; and after kicking the door to behind her, she proceeded to clatter them about on the table, just as she would clatter the plates of cabbage and bacon at the chaws’ dinner — a noise that enabled Mrs Hermitage to apologise to Tom in an undertone for the “absence of their man, who was busy in the stable — the depressed state of the agricultural interest not allowing of their keeping a reg’lar flunkey.”

  And Guineafowle, seeing how nobly they had responded to his notice, began cackling and complimenting his host and hostess on the display, observing “that they must be expecting the Duke and Duchess of Gormonstone, or some great guns of that sort. They surely would never think of making such a spread for a mere master of hounds like himself”; and receiving the assurance that it was all in honour of him, he set his flexible back a-going so briskly that it looked as if it would never settle again; but when it did subside, and he got himself into a chair on the right of his elegant hostess, he set-to upon the provender in a way that looked very like having saved his own breakfast at home. Tom, too, did pretty well, considering he had taken as much as he meant for that meal at Carol Hill Green, and that he was desperately in love also. Those little episodes of life, however, never interfered with our Tom’s appetite.

  The meal was now interrupted by the clatter of a horse, and the passing of a man in a macintosh and ante-gropolos boots, on a badly shaped, badly clipped, mouse-coloured hack.

  “Oh, here’s old Bolus!” exclaimed Hermitage, beckoning him in through the window; “good man — very respectable man,” added he, propitiating his guests in his favour.

  “Quite agree with you — quite agree with you,” bowed old Flexible Back nearly into his cup—” very respectable man — very useful man in a country; people can get on much better without lawyers than they can without doctors.”

  “And here’s another man we can do badly without — Ribs, the butcher,” exclaimed Hermitage, as that fat, round-faced, rosy-gilled functionary came shuffling past on a flea-bitten grey.

  Having hanked their horses on at the door, in the independent way these worthies dispose of their quadrupeds, they now came rolling into the house, as if it was an inn or their own.

  “What’ll you drink?” asked Ribs as they stamped along the passage.

  “Thank you, I’m not dry,” replied the doctor mildly.

  “Hoot, ye brute beast! d’ye nabbut drink when yeer dry?” growled the butcher.

  The doctor, like most country doctors, was humble and meek, for he had a terrible rival in Mr Digitalis, the union one, who charged less than himself; but Ribs, who was well-to-do in the world, and, moreover, had Hermitage deep in his books, was quite the hail-fellow-well-met, nodded to Guineafowle, and joked Hermitage about his farming, observing that he must grow his turnips for pickling instead of for feeding cattle upon — they were so small. Guineafowle, on his part, not owing Ribs anything, and caring very little whether he came out with his hounds or not, took him very coolly, expending any little condescension he had to spare from Mrs Hermitage upon the doctor. To the lady he was most complimentary and attentive; so much so, indeed, that it was well Mrs Guineafowle was not coming her quondam maid Emma Springfield over him through the keyhole.

  He praised Mrs Hermitage’s looks, and praised her dress, and praised her figure, and admired her multitudinous armlets, and spoke well of everything on the table, from the muddy coffee to the folding of the coroneted napkins, which, he said, were got up in a style infinitely superior to the work of the generality of servants of the present d
ay. Mrs Hermitage, not liking this near approach to the “shop,” especially before Ribs, who served the castle, and might tell of the coronets, turned the conversation by asking our Tom if he had been at any of her Majesty’s balls the last season, which very much flattered our friend that he should be even thought of for anything of the sort. Finding he had not, she expatiated on their surpassing splendour, strongly recommending him not to miss an opportunity, and even hinting that she could get him to the palace.

  Hermitage, too, availed himself of the change of partners for drawing Guinea into a discussion on the corn laws, and the impossibility of farmers going on without a very great reduction of rent — a proposition that did not altogether suit our distinguished friend; for though he was quite ready to admit that he had been robbed and plundered by the million, and that things had gone quite contrary to what he anticipated when he ratted from the Tories, yet, as a now liberal landlord, he was not for taking more on himself than he could help.

  Hermitage, however, was urgent and importunate, hoping, perhaps, to enlist Ribs, who was now at the blue-bottled spirit-stand on the side-table, in his favour; but Guinea, not relishing the discussion, took advantage of the movement in the room for looking out of the end window on his hounds; and observing that punctuality was the politeness of princes, he made a series of most condescending salaams to Mrs Hermitage as he shook her by the hand, and sallied forth.

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  A DAY WITH THE MAJOR’S HARRIERS.

  OUR TOM AND the major having remounted their horses and simpered their adieux to Mrs Hermitage, waving her lace-fringed kerchief at the breakfast-room window, now sought the patient Jonathan Falconer, who was moving his little hounds to and fro and round about the dockeney thistly pasture, wondering whenever his master and Co would come. Since our friends entered the house the field had increased by Mr Seton, the self-taught veterinary surgeon, mounted on a woe-begone, iron-marked, white Rosinante, that looked for all the world as if he kept it to try experiments upon; by Mr Dweller, the auctioneer, who, having ferreted out Guinea’s early career, had the impudence to talk of him — over his cups, of course — as a brother chip—” one of us”; by Mr Ginger, the horse-coper, on a finely shaped antediluvian brown, that he complimented by calling “the colt.” Mr Drumhead and Mr Ribgrass, the cattle-jobbers, too, had turned up in their baggy drab overalls and sack-like macintoshes, just as if they had been seduced from the road by the sight of the hounds, though in reality they had both started from home with the intention of having a hunt, it being observable that hare-hunting is a good deal pursued on the sly, few people going out, or professing to go out, for a regular day, but pretending to cut in for a game of romps, just as they would for a rubber of whist at a card party. Mr Vernal, the market-gardener, too, was there; also Mr Elbows, the architect’s apprentice, with a long tin plan-case under his arm; and Mr Tapper, Mr Sweater’s clerk, who had come that way round with a writ in his pocket to serve on Giles Sloper, the farmer. Altogether there were fifteen or sixteen horse, pony, or rat men — an unusually large field for the major — and their united cavalry might be worth fifty or five-and-fifty pounds. The major, with our Tom on his right, now approached them, and having acknowledged Falconer’s hoist of the cap, proceeded to pay his respects to the field. The day being fine, and the news having spread that the great Mr Hall, the banker’s son, would be out, half the neighbouring village of Codgerley had come down to have a look at the reality of a name that was so familiar on their five-pound notes, just as one would go to have a look at Mr Matthew Marshall of the Bank of England if he would be kind enough to parade himself at Charing Cross.